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Sinlessness of Mary?
Many Church Fathers posited this belief, but there is a significant minority view (including St. John Chrysostom) that believes she did sin and even go as far to list them. Many of our church hymns also seem to imply it.
God Bless
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Comments
I'm not asking about the immaculate conception by the way (how she was born), but whether she actually sinned.
}at;wleb `ncemne@ ouoh =e=;=u qen hwb niben@ ;y`etac`ini nan `mV]@ eftalyout `ejen nec`jvoi.
أيتها الغير دنسة العفيفة. القديسة في كل شئ. التى قدمت لنا. الله محمولا علي ذراعيها.
Of course, we magnify her because she carried the Logos and that is the most important thing but her hard work and effort before that is what drew the benevolent eye of the Father toward her.
Could she have sinned? possibly
As for not sinning taking away from her holiness, this argument doesn't make much sense. There is a difference between having your free will taken away from you, and from having it but choosing not to sin. Otherwise the same argument can work for Jesus, it somehow takes away from His Holiness because He did not sin.
No one is arguing that Mary COULD not sin. I am simply asking whether she chose to sin or not. It is a common Eastern Orthodox understanding that she was indeed sinless and they call her "Panagia" the "All-Holy". Interestingly enough we call her that in Shere Maria as well, we also call the Trinity Panagios in the Liturgy.
Let me say that to say because she was human she must've sinned is the same as saying that human nature is bound to sin regardless (and that makes free will meaningless).
It seems that in a relative sense, there is no greater human after Christ than her, and so compared to us she is indeed sinless (as we call Enoch and St. Bishoy perfect and the Gospel refers to Zechariah and his wife as blameless along with Job). This is in a relative sense, since we also affirm that no one is without sin even if his life is a day on earth as we say in the Litany of the Departed. This means compared to Christ who has absolute sinlessness, she is in need of salvation.
}at;wleb `ncemne@ ouoh =e=;=u qen hwb niben@ ;y`etac`ini nan `mV]@ eftalyout `ejen nec`jvoi.
أيتها الغير دنسة العفيفة. القديسة في كل شئ. التى قدمت لنا. الله محمولا علي ذراعيها.
Mina!!
Now look at biblical translations of Job 14:4,5. This is from the NKJV: "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one! Since his days are determined," This translation, in my opinion, is rather loose. Nearly all other biblical translations say the same thing. Regardless of biblical translation, the premise is the same. No man is sinless even if his life on earth is one day. No one can bring a clean thing out of an unclean (thing)? This includes an immaculate birth of God since God cannot be born through sin or be subjected to sin. All mankind is unclean because of our fallen nature. It is foolish to think that any man, woman or creation that is unclean can become immaculate or hold God or give birth to the infinite, immaculate God by their own merits. If God had to purify Isaiah's mouth with a coal taken from the temple by a seraphim so he can simply speak about God, what do you think it will take for God to make a fallen creation give birth to God?
The answer is Luke 1:28: ke,aritwmeny (full of grace). Grace made St Mary ready to give birth to God. In other words, there is nothing St Mary could or could not do which would qualify her to give birth to God because she is a creation (specifically a human who shares the fallen nature). As one of the fathers once said, "God does not choose the qualified. God qualifies the chosen." He qualifies the chosen by the grace.
The problem Catholics have is that when St Mary was called ke,aritwmeny, it was before she consented to the Incarnation. Thus, she was already filled with grace by some other means. The RC defined this other means as her own immaculate conception (as mabsoota pointed out). But dogmatically this is a problem because, as Minasoliman said quoting Fr Taros Malaty's definition of grace in a recent discussion, " 'Grace is the presence of God working in us.' This presence is not some sort of space created and consecrated by God, but God Himself dwelling in us to work in us. Otherwise, if this was just a mere imitation without God’s indwelling, there is no need for an incarnation."
As you can see, we have the chicken and the egg conundrum: The only way for a creation to give birth to God is to have God dwell in the creation. Thus, St Mary IS sinless. Not by nature but by grace. Not by superhuman works that qualified her to become the Theotokos but by grace she was chosen to be the Theotokos while God dwelt in her. (Notice the past tense of the verb. It's very important.)
(By the way, a similar conundrum is found in the Magnifica praise of St Mary, "My soul magnifies the Lord". I won't elaborate unless someone wants me to because it is outside the topic)
All other reasons explaining the sinlessness of Mary falls short. It doesn't matter if she called her son savior. (One can call God savior or ask God to save/deliver/pass temptation and still be sinless. Jesus did it in Gethsemane.) It doesn't matter if sinless negates free will. (If this were true, Jesus has no free will). It doesn't matter if there was someone else who better than St Mary, she would have been the Theotokos. (The absence of proof is not proof. You can't prove what someone is because no one else is the same or better). It doesn't matter if she chose not to sin after the annunciation (she can't choose not to commit sins she commits unwillingly or unknowingly). It doesn't matter if one is relatively sinless compared to the absolute sinlessness of God. (You can't have contradictory absolute truths, nor can you have an absolute truth contradict a relative truth. Truth is truth. Either man can be absolutely sinless in himself or not, regardless of his relative relationship with God's absolute sinlessness.) All of these are weak arguments because they do not address the nature of sin and how sin affected man and how God dealt with sin. (Sounds eerily familiar to St Athanasius' On the Incarnation).
First, St. Athanasius says:
for if the works of the Word’s Godhead had not taken place through the body, man had not
been deified; and again, had not the properties of the flesh been ascribed to the Word, man
had not been thoroughly delivered from them; but though they had ceased for a little
while, as I said before, still sin had remained in him and corruption, as was the case with
mankind before Him; and for this reason:—Many for instance have been made holy and
clean from all sin; nay, Jeremiah was hallowed even from the womb, and John, while
yet in the womb, leapt for joy at the voice of Mary Bearer of God; nevertheless ‘death
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those that had not sinned after the similitude of
Adam’s transgression;’ and thus man remained mortal and corruptible as before, liable
to the affections proper to their nature. But now the Word having become man and having
appropriated what pertains to the flesh, no longer do these things touch the body, because of the Word who has come in it, but they are destroyed by Him, and henceforth men
no longer remain sinners and dead according to their proper affections, but having risen
according to the Word’s power, they abide ever immortal and incorruptible. Whence
also, whereas the flesh is born of Mary Bearer of God, He Himself is said to have been
born, who furnishes to others an origin of being; in order that He may transfer our origin
into Himself, and we may no longer, as mere earth, return to earth, but as being knit into
the Word from heaven, may be carried to heaven by Him. Therefore in like manner not
without reason has He transferred to Himself the other affections of the body also; that we,
no longer as being men, but as proper to the Word, may have share in eternal life. For no
longer according to our former origin in Adam do we die; but henceforward our origin and
all infirmity of flesh being transferred to the Word, we rise from the earth, the curse from
sin being removed, because of Him who is in us, and who has become a curse for us.
And with reason; for as we are all from earth and die in Adam, so being regenerated from
above of water and Spirit, in the Christ we are all quickened; the flesh being no longer earthly,
but being henceforth made Word, by reason of God’s Word who for our sake ‘became
flesh.'" Against the Arians 3. 33.
It seems that for St. Athanasius, many have been wholly clean of sin, and then he proceeds to give two particular examples of those who were hallowed even from the womb, Jeremiah and John the Baptist. Being 'sinless' in an entirely legalistic sense seems to be quite possible to St. Athanasius. However these people were still in 'need of salvation' (a strange phrase to me for it seems that we are and will all always be radically in need of God) due to our own condition of mortality and corruptibility made real in us by our departure from Him Who Is Giver of Life and He Who Abides Forever.
The comments of Orthodox Scholar Jaroslav Pelikan (Memory eternal!) are of immense value here in commenting on the human condition for the fathers (particularly St. Athanasius):
Despite all this strong language about sin, however, the fundamental problem of man was not his sin, but his corruptibility. The reason the incarnation was necessary was that man had not merely done wrong-for this, repentance would have sufficed- but had fallen into a corruption, a transiency that threatened him with annihilation. As the agent of creation who had called man out of nothing, the Logos was also the one to rescue him from annihilation. This the Logos did by taking flesh. For this theology, it was the universality of death, not the inevitability of sin, that was fundamental. The statement of Romans 5:14, that ‘Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam,’ was taken to prove that there were many who had been ‘pure of every sin,’ such as Jeremiah and John the Baptist (cf.Against the Arians 3.33). It was death and corruption that stood in the way of man’s participation in the divine nature, and these had to be overcome in the incarnation of the Logos." Pg 285 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600).
"In the course of the fourth century, Athanasius gets irked with certain unspecified heretics, because in their ignorance of the true sense of the Scriptures they would take the sordes of Job 14:4 to be a sin in the proper sense. In the view of Athanasius, the inspired author is simply referring to the physical filth that soils the baby when it is born, as may be inferred from Lev 12:2-5." he then quotes Athanasius,
"But the heretics do not know that this sentence refers to the natural filth that the baby carries with it when it is born from the womb of its mother. For this reason Moses the legislator (Lev 12:2-5) declares that the woman who has given birth is impure, for forty days in the case of a male child, and for eighty days in the case of a female child, on account of the greater humidity in its composition. But even if the law of Moses did not provide this evidence, the very nature of things provides a sufficient argument to refute [sc. the heretics]. For what sin can a child that is one day old commit? Adultery? Not at all, because it has not reached the age to have [sexual] pleasure. Fornication? Not that either, because it does not yet have desire. Murder? But it is unable even to carry a murder weapon. Perjury? No, for it cannot yet make an articulate sound. Greed? It does not yet have awareness of the money of another, or even its own. The truth is that babies are long-suffering and endure: until they grow to be adults, if they are struck, they cry out, if they are pursued, they do not defend themselves... No since newborns are completely without a share in these misdeeds, what sin can a one day old baby have, save only, as we said, bodily filth? Indeed Scripture does not say, 'No one is pure from sin,' but 'from filth.'" St. Athanasius Fr. in Matth 9. (PG 27.1368-1369) as quoted in The Transmission of Sin: Augustine and the Pre-Augustinian Sources (AAR Religions in Translation), pg 197-198.
It seems that this notion of being pure from sin or the filth of sin began with the interpretation of Augustine of this verse. Again from Beatrice,
"However, the Old Testament testimonia that have by far the greatest importance for Augustine are, without question, Job 14:4 and verse 7 of Psalm 50, the so-called miserere. The former verse, according to the original Hebrew, reads: ‘Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing? No one.’ As all of modern biblical scholarship has recognized, the notion of original sin that the Christian tradition has wanted to find in this verse is simply not there. The context of the verse has no connection with the story of the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis, and contains no characteristic elements of the theology of original sin as we find it developed in the writings of Augustine. Rather, the passage simply laments the miserable and ephemeral condition of human beings, and the utter fragility of their existential situation. However the Greek version of the Seventy contains a significant variation. It reads as follows: ‘Who shall be pure of filth? No one, not even if his life on earth is of one day!’... For he [Augustine] saw in the filth of the newborn, whose life on earth may be as short as a day, the obvious manifestation of the sin contracted at birth. Indeed, he identified that filth with original sin itself. This is easily proved by the way Augustine cites the text in question. He may substitute, in the Latin version he uses, the word ‘peccatum’ [sin] for the word ‘sordes’ [filth], or sometimes he may simply speak indiscriminately of ‘sordes peccati,’ ‘Filth of sin,’ in reference to Job 14:4." Pg 96,97 of Transmission
Another thing I would like to bring to witness here is the overly literally and dogmatic way in which we interpret texts that we simply fit into our doctrinal folds. Take Psalm 58 (LXX) for example, "If ye do indeed speak righteousness, then do ye judge rightly, ye sons of men. 2 For ye work iniquities in your hearts in the earth: your hands plot unrighteousness. 3 Sinners have gone astray from the womb: they go astray from the belly: they speak lies. 4 Their venom is like that of a serpent; as that of a deaf asp, and that stops her ears; 5 which will not hear the voice of charmers, nor heed the charm prepared skillfully by the wise.6 God has crushed their teeth in their mouth: God has broken the cheek-teeth of the lions. 7 They shall utterly pass away like water running through: he shall bend his bow till they shall fail."
We can either interpret that as 1) saying that the Psalmist is making a dogmatic statement that people are sinners from the womb itself (which might end up resulting in some weird doctrine of pre-destination perhaps) or we can interpret it 2) as stating that the sinners have taken their entire being astray, they have never had the love of God. The righteous indignation of the Psalmist leads to his use of poetic license to state that those sinners have never been on the true path. If we chose to interpret this saying literally as in number one, then what stops us from understanding the Psalmist's words regarding their venom, maybe these people really produce venom? Or the Psalmist's words later about God crushing their teeth in their mouth, perhaps we might understand that to mean that literally God will destroy their teeth and they will have a huge dentist's bill to come.
My point, in being facetious like this, is to state that the Psalmist here (as I believe is the case for Job as well) is stating nothing about the condition of humankind, humanity's status with God, anything of the life. Indeed both cases seem to be accomplishing different ends whether through poetic license or through pointing to other realities of their day. In understanding the phrase from the morning service "No one is without sin even if his life on earth is a single day", it could be due to western Augustinian influence (but I dont think thats the only reason its stated in its form) or it could have a real meaning to us. This is part of the morning service where (obviously) only adults will be the hearers, prayers, interpreters, the active elements of the liturgical gathering. If this is of a pedagogical nature then surely its not trying to point to all the infants that they too are sinful. For me it rather points that each person, no matter their circumstance, no matter how much worse off we think we are than the other fellow, no matter what place we are, we cannot shift the blame of our sin onto that. EVEN if we were here for a single day, we would have left God and gone astray. This is a pious and not a dogmatic statement, one for reflection not for dogmatic exegesis.
I have blabbered alot, sorry.
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I have struggled with that as well ShareTheLord. Is it not however theoretically possible for one to live a life without sin? If our nature does not make us automatically sin, but only our free will, is it not imaginable that there were indeed saints of this sort, most of all, the Theotokos?
I'm not sure knowledge has to precede choice. I also don't think one has to willingly choose sin. As a business owner, I see how my staff interacts with each other and how sin gets in the way. I once observed two of my staff angry at each other to the point where it brought animosity to the whole office. When I confronted each one, they told me that Staff A did something to Staff B that Staff A didn't even know she did. And Staff B did something to Staff A that Staff B didn't know she did (it was not vindictive or retaliatory). Neither staff knew what they did at the time they were committing their sin. Neither staff choose to offend or anger the other. Neither staff believed they sinned. By your definition, neither staff sinned since they did not know they chose sin, nor that their choice would end up causing more sin for the whole office.
Now of course we can not hold to a Total Depravity theology. For if we were totally depraved with a flesh that always sins, then we could not be judged for any sins we do....unless Christ condemned sin in the flesh. Thus, in Romans 8, St Paul makes the point we have chosen to walk in the spirit and not in the flesh. We are freed from the carnal mind and sin, even though the body is dead and we sin unwillingly and unknowingly through the body. "And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you."